Holt, Owen

Road Toad is the brand name of San Jose California USA luthier Owen Holt. He started making Ukuleles in 1998 and his first Ukulele was derived from the shark toothed lei'o mano (shark toothed weapon). Since the start of his luthiery efforts he has been a bit experimental and in addition to making some distinctive Ukuleles, like his Mana Tenors with an extended cutaway. On the conventional side he makes all of the standard scales of Ukulele, plus Luli'us and Taropatches, (and so other less conventional extra string variants too)

He is most famous however for being the luthier who saw that the Ashbory Bass dimensions were very similar to that of a Baritone Ukulele and so made a Baritone that would take Ashbory strings, thus inventing the Bass Ukulele; he calls his Bass Ukuleles Big Buffo's. Then because he, (like most people), didn't like the Ashbory strings he came up with the paHoeHoe Bass Ukulele Strings, (the first Bass Ukulele strings and now to go full circle most people put Bass Ukulele strings on their Ashborys). He has taken his idea further and developed shorter scale Bass Ukuleles, (Tenor scales are Baby Buffo's and Concert scale are Tadpoles), then tried out some solid,(ish) models and finally taking his original ideas to Kala and helped them develop the U-Bass

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